The preliminary study of differentiating osteoporotic fractured group from nonfractured group

Osteoporosis is characterized by an abnormal loss of bone mineral content, which leads to a tendency to nontraumatic bone fractures or to structural deformations of bone. Thus bone density measurement has been considered as a most reliable method to assess bone fracture risk due to osteoporosis. In past decades bone texture measures have been also studied in connection with the bone quality estimation. However, most studies have been focused on texture analysis of CT or MR images. Though studies on plain radiographs have been also performed to assess in vivo trabecular structure these studies are mainly done on anatomic sites such as femur, spine, and calcaneus. In this preliminary study we apply various texture measures to distal radius plain radiographs and point out several promising texture measures that significantly distinguish between osteoporotic fractured group and nonfractured group.